Curing Hangovers
by Copycat
Summary: Sequel to 'Too Much To Drink' and 'Not Enough'. It's Monday. There is music to be faced.


TITLE: Curing Hangovers  
AUTHOR: Copycat (Lizzy)  
RATING: PG-13  
CLASSIFICATION: Nikki/Harry, Friendship, Romance  
SPOILERS: Anything through series 12 is fair game.  
SUMMARY: Sequel to Too Much To Drink? and Not Enough. It's Monday. There is music to be faced.  
DISCLAIMER: The BBC owns everything you recognise. And probably some things you don't.

So, this was actually part four. There was meant to be a part three, which was from Harry's POV, but while it's a fun challenge to try to say the same thing fifty times using different words, it's hardly an interesting read. And also, in all honesty, it's not a fun challenge at all once you get to the end of page three and you run out of synonyms for 'love' and 'denial'. So let's all just skip ahead in the programme a bit.

Mira, I know you said Harry, but in the end I just couldn't make it work... I'm sorry.

* * *

Nikki came back from the cutting room to find Harry seated by his desk, staring at his computer screen and very decidedly _not_ working.

He turned when he heard her approaching. "You're here early," he told her, frowning. He must have known she would be there, though. She had left her coffee mug on her desk.

She looked at the clock. It was just half past seven. She had been there for over an hour, determined to get to the lab before him so she would be settled in and comfortable when he showed up and everything turned awkward. The lab would be _her_ space, and he would be the one bringing the outside world into it.

From his slightly petulant tone she wondered if he had been hoping to do the same thing.

She shrugged, as if coming in to work an hour and a half early for no work-related reason at all was completely normal. "Just wanted to get a head start on the week," she told him nonchalantly.

"Doing what?" He grinned. "Re-alphabetising slides?"

She thought about offering to cut him into slides and alphabetising them but then decided against it. There was no need to provoke him, after all. Just because she had spent a horrible weekend stressing about the kiss it didn't give her the right to take it out on him. "I had some paperwork."

He nodded sagely, clearly aware that that hadn't been what she meant to say when she opened her mouth. "How's your liver?"

She laughed in spite of herself, remembering her last few thoughts before falling asleep on Friday night.

"What?"

She shook her head, still grinning. "Nothing. Just--I knew you'd say something like that."

"Okay, I agree," he said, nodding. "It wasn't the most inventive joke ever, but you have to admit, the whole area of drink jokes is pretty down-trodden. There's really nothing new anyone can say."

She pulled a face. "Which is why you could have so easily gone somewhere else," she told him sarcastically then bit down on her tongue. She had a feeling this conversation wasn't going very well for her. Why was there no case they could discuss instead? Could she maybe ask him if he knew when Leo might be in? No, that wouldn't work, he should ask _her_ that, she was the one who had been here for ages. Crap. Why did she have to come in first, anyway?

"Oooh," he said as if she had just reminded him of something very important. "You mean, like how you're a bit of a slut when you're drunk?" he grinned.

She looked at him in horror. No. No way did he just say that. Was it too late to emigrate?

"I don't think that Aaron guy was too happy you left with me," Harry went on, apparently completely oblivious, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

He hadn't meant _that_ at all. He was talking about what happened at the bar.

Phew.

"Well, I've still got his number somewhere, so it'll be okay," she assured him.

He looked at her briefly, shock on his face, and then he turned to his computer. "You are unbelievable," he muttered.

"Well, Aaron seemed to think so," she agreed, a trace of sarcasm underneath the forced cheeriness.

Harry sighed and started typing away on his keyboard. She was fairly sure he was just doing it to get out of talking with her, he hadn't actually opened any programs.

"Are you seriously thinking about going out with him?" he asked her at last, when he wasn't able to hold it in any longer. "The guy was an idiot, Nikki, you said so yourself."

"Well, I seem to have a knack for attracting guys like that," she told him. She had absolutely no intention of calling or seeing paediatric Aaron ever again, even if she did remember where she had put his phone number, but she would be damned if she was telling Harry that.

"If you took a look around, I think you'd find that you attract nice guys, too," he told her.

"Yes, well, you're there to screw that up for me, aren't you?" Why were they arguing about this? It made no sense. Why couldn't he just let it go? Why couldn't _she_ just ignore him?

He turned to look at her, surprised. "What do you mean?"

She had no clue, really, but then it came to her. "Andrew's a nice guy. You managed to chase him off quite thoroughly."

He looked stricken. "I told you I was sorry about that."

"You didn't, actually," she reminded him. "You just said you _meant_ to."

"Yeah, well, I thought we were okay. You said--" he broke off. "It seemed like we were okay."

She looked up at him. "What? Because I kissed you?" Shut up, Nikki. Just shut up. Leave the room. Now. Go. "Is that what you mean?"

She could see him actually physically back-pedalling. It was almost comical.

"No! I didn't think--" he stuttered. "I wasn't--"

Okay, strike the 'almost'. This was worth the humiliation, because clearly he was even more uncomfortable than her.

"Relax, Harry," she told him at last, taking pity on him. "It's not that big a deal. You kissed _me_ once, now I've kissed you. We're even." She tried to look at him reassuringly. She wanted to feel reassured herself. If they could both just know that's all it was, then they would be fine. They had been fine the last time, after all. Once she had adjusted to the idea that it hadn't meant anything.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Harry said, smiling slightly now. "But I seem to recall asking you out on a date after I kissed you. Whereas you just slammed the door in my face."

Oh, okay. So this would become a joke. They would make a joke out of how she had accidentally slipped and let her true feelings show. Wonderful. Just, brilliant. "Yes, and if I remember correctly you spent the entire meal thinking about your dead ex-girlfriend."

The words were barely out of her mouth before the guilt kicked in. Why did she have to bring that up?

"Shit," he said, surprising her. He shook his head. "You're right, aren't you?"

She smiled softly, full of remorse. "It had to happen sometime," she joked. "And it was completely understandable, Harry, I'm not--"

He cut her off. "No. I mean, you really do attract arseholes."

She laughed, more out of surprise than actual amusement. "What?"

He looked away, suddenly embarrassed, it seemed. "Have you heard anything from Leo?"

"No." It was still only 7.45. He wouldn't be there for a while yet. Since he and Janet had got together he wasn't quite so eager to come in to work earlier than necessary. Not that Nikki wasn't very happy for him, but on this particular morning it might've been nice if he had shown up, say, right now.

She looked at the door, realising as she turned around to do so that Harry was doing the same thing.

"I'm sorry," she told him, still watching the door.

"It's not your fault he hasn't called in. It's probably Janet's," he added suggestively.

She grinned. "No. I'm sorry we're sitting here waiting impatiently for Leo to show up because we can't stand to be alone together for half an hour."

"You can't stand being alone with me?" He sounded hurt and she turned around. He looked it, too.

"I just meant it's awkward," she explained. "I knew it would be, but I guess it's just more awkward than I expected."

"I'm not awkward," Harry lied unconvincingly and then shook his head, grinning. "I'm sorry about DI Marlowe. Do you want me to ring him and apologise? I'll tell him what a lovely girl you are."

Oh, the horror. Nikki laughed. "No. Please don't." Tell _me_ that.

He was watching her, searching her face. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." She hated it when he looked at her like that. It was so caring, tender even, and she hated how she sometimes let herself think it meant anything at all. It was the exact same way he had looked at her on Friday night, right before... Well, right before.

She looked away. She didn't want him looking at her like that and suggesting she go out with someone else. She didn't want to be looked at in a way that made her not care about anyone else while he was making it clear the look meant nothing.

"Well, if that was all it took to scare him off, he wasn't worth it, anyway," Harry told her. "It would never have lasted."

She smiled. She hadn't really had anything 'lasting' in mind when she had been telling Andrew how sorry she was that the case was over and they wouldn't be seeing each other again. Not lasting any longer than the next morning, at least. "Yeah?"

Harry nodded, apparently pleased by this logic that seemed to absolve him. "Yes. In fact, maybe you should start introducing all your boyfriends to me. I'll scare off the ones that aren't worth your time."

"That does sound like a great idea," she joked. Except then she would be both very bored and very lonely at night.

He grinned. "Excellent. That's what we'll do, then."

"But what if you get it wrong?" she asked. "You could accidentally scare off the love of my life."

He shook his head in resignation at her stupidity. "If he's the love of your life, he wouldn't scare that easily. Would you _want_ to be with someone who couldn't even handle me?"

She pretended to think about it and he balled up a post-it and threw it at her. "Well, no," she agreed finally, throwing the post-it into the bin with an exaggerated eye-roll. "Because anyone who can handle you would _definitely_ be excellent parenting material."

He pulled a face. "Let's just hope he's the type who will hold your hair for you when you drink too much and get sick."

"I wasn't sick," she insisted.

He grinned. "So you woke up on Saturday morning feeling wonderful?"

"Yes." That was a lie, of course. She had woken up on Saturday, around noon, feeling _terrible_. Not because of the alcohol, though, but because of the memories of what had happened the night before.

Which was worse than any alcohol-induced hangover.

"I don't believe you," he told her. "No one gets that drunk without getting hungover."

She stood up, picking up a folder from her desk at random, determined to go to the layout room and away from him. "Just because _you_ can't hold your drink..." she trailed off significantly, a sarcastic smile on her lips as she walked off.

...With Harry's PM report. Great.

She booted up the laptop in the layout room, hoping to find something on there to occupy her. Perhaps some evidence from one of Harry's cases that she could pick to pieces.

She sighed to herself, knowing she was being unreasonable. _Harry_ hadn't actually done anything wrong. _She_ was the one who had kissed _him_, and now _she_ was the one who couldn't deal with the consequences.

Whereas he was just dandy, which seemed incredibly unfair.

She bent over, resting her elbows on the edge of the table, using the touchpad to pull up images from a folder with crime scene photos.

She heard him enter the room and knew that he was watching her, but she refused to look up, pretending instead to be engrossed by work.

"The Emerson case?" he asked a long and agonising minute later, coming over to stand next to her to look at the screen instead of her. "Didn't that go to court last month?"

Nikki closed her eyes, slowly counting backwards from a million. "I just got thinking about the blood spatter," she said, a trace of desperation in her voice as she struggled to come up with a reasonable explanation for why she was looking at these pictures. "I'm not sure if I interpreted this right." She pointed at a picture on the screen.

Clearly thinking her anxiety was related to the case, Harry put a comforting hand on her back, but then pulled it away hastily when she turned to look him in the eye. "You got it right, Nikki," he told her with conviction. "Don't second-guess yourself."

If possible, she felt even worse. Here she was, angry with him for something she had done, and he was being nice and trying to comfort her. Clearly she was a horrible person.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, her eyes on the screen again.

He laughed briefly, not really sounding amused. "I'm having a really hard time keeping up with you this morning," he admitted.

She smiled to herself, her finger moving the cursor around on the screen in uneven circles. "Maybe you should stop trying, then," she told him after a moment.

"Where's the fun in that?" he asked, and she could hear the smile in his voice before it turned serious and concerned again as he went on. "What's wrong, Nikki?"

She shook her head, still refusing to look at him. "Don't worry about it, it's not your problem," she said.

"But I _am_ worried," he insisted although she suspected it probably wasn't strictly true. He hadn't realised there was anything _to_ worry about until now. And there wasn't, really. All she needed was a bit of time. "Can't I help fix it?"

Finally she turned to look at him, unable to resist the pull of his persistent gaze any longer. "No, Harry, you can't fix this problem. You _are_ the problem," she admitted, desperate for him to drop it.

He looked stricken. "Is this still about DI Marlowe? I promise I'll stay away from any man you ever talk to in the future. Won't even say 'hello' to him." Underneath the assurance there was a trace of anger.

She sighed heavily. "No, Harry. This isn't about other men. It's about _you_."

He shook his head, clearly getting annoyed. "So tell me what I did. Tell me how to fix it."

"I told you, you can't. It's _my_ problem."

He groaned, throwing out his arms in frustration. "If _I'm_ the problem, how can _you_ fix it?"

"I don't know," she told him, watching as his irritation evaporated and was replaced by more of that dreadful sympathy and concern.

Bringing her right back to the root of the problem. As charged as their arguments could be at times, at least fighting was better than having him look at her like this. Like he wanted to tear down the world and put it back up the right way for her.

It was just a look, and the part of the world she wanted him to change, he never would, so it didn't matter.

"Can't you just leave me alone?" she spat out, forcing more venom into her voice than she actually felt, desperate to keep the argument going and stop him looking at her like that.

"No," he said simply, a trace of sadness in his voice. As if he wished he could.

"Why not?"

He looked away from her, his eyes searching the room for something. "I don't know," he said and somehow she got the feeling he was lying. He _did_ know, he just didn't want to tell her. "Just--tell me what it is. I mean, if it's not about Marlowe..." He trailed off, looking at her as if expecting her to finally admit that, yes, that _was_ what she was upset about.

She shook her head, feeling her anger rise at his complete lack of understanding. "I told you, Harry. I don't give a toss about Andrew Marlowe. It's _you_."

"It's me, what?" he asked, sounding equally annoyed. "You're not making any sense, Nikki."

She closed her eyes. "You don't care," she told him.

She sensed him moving closer and then felt his hand on hers on the table, as if he needed a different connection with her now that she had made eye contact impossible. She pulled her hand away and opened her eyes. Looking at him was easier than having him touch her, after all.

"Of course I do," he said, his voice insistent. "But you need to tell me. I'm not a mind reader."

She laughed, silently thanking whatever deity was out there for that. "You don't care. _That's_ the problem."

He shook his head. "Are we speaking the same language? Because I just said that--"

She cut him off. "That's not what I mean."

"Then what?" he asked, clearly frustrated.

"You're making jokes and being nice and I--" she broke off. "It's fine. I mean, it's going to _be_ fine. I just need a bit of time to..."

"Time to what?" he asked, frowning, trying to make sense of her half-completed sentences.

"Time to not care, either."

"About what?" From the look on his face it was obvious that he was trying really hard to understand – and failing abysmally.

She shook her head, unwilling to explain.

"Nikki," he sighed, his voice half-exasperation, half-warning.

"Why are you pushing me? Why can't you just let it go?" she asked, genuinely confused.

He shrugged, taking a step closer to her. Much too close for comfort, she decided, and tried to take a step backwards, nearly tripping over the stool in front of the computer on the table.

He reached out a hand to steady her. "Have you been drinking?" he joked.

She rolled her eyes but didn't say anything, too busy trying to ignore the fact that he still hadn't let go of her arm.

This was exactly the kind of thing she needed to get back to not caring about. Not that she could ever explain that to Harry.

But when she looked down at his hand, wrapped around her forearm, he let go quickly as if he understood, running the hand through his hair instead in what might almost seem like a nervous gesture. She looked up at him.

"I just want to be sure we're okay," he told her, his voice soft, almost pleading with her.

"We will be," she promised, reaching out to take his hand without thinking about what she was doing. When she realised what she had done, she wanted to let go, but he had already turned his hand around, intertwining his fingers with hers and making it impossible for her to pull away.

They both stared at their joined hands as if they were some alien life-form that suddenly grown between them.

"Why won't you just tell me what I've done?" he asked.

"You haven't done anything," she said, sighing. "It was all me."

"Oh, so when you said _I_ was the problem, you were lying?" he asked, a note of teasing in his voice.

"No, it's still you," she insisted, smiling slightly.

He shook his head, smiling back. "Right. _You_ got drunk, and _I_ saw it, and now you're embarrassed. Is that it?"

She wondered if it were really possible to be that obtuse. How could he be that close to being right and not understand?

"Pretty much, yes," she agreed, hoping that would end the conversation.

He grinned smugly and she realised she has miscalculated. This was just going to lead to an endless string of jokes.

"I kissed you," she blurted out. Maybe she could embarrass him into silence.

"I know," he said slowly, his expression guarded. "Don't worry about it, I know it was just the alcohol, I'm not..."

She shook her head, silencing him. "_That's_ the problem," she confessed. "I mean, it _was_ the alcohol, but--" she paused, finally pulling her hand away. "But I'm not drunk anymore."

He grinned to himself, apparently enjoying some private joke at her expense. "There's ethanol in the specimen jars," he quipped.

She frowned, not quite sure what he meant. Was he suggesting that she get drunk and do it again? "I think I'll pass," she told him.

"I still don't really understand what the problem is," he told her a moment later, just when she was beginning to think they were done.

She wanted to scream.

This was _never_ going to end. He would never understand, so he would never leave her alone, and it would never stop killing her that he was able to be so nonchalant about it.

And then it hit her. The idea was so insane it might actually be brilliant. And, more importantly, it might actually work. He had been embarrassed when she first brought up the whole kissing incident, after all.

She didn't allow herself time to think about it, because if she did, she knew she would realise that it was really more likely to make _her_ problem worse, and she wasn't any more likely to be able to act indifferent just because she upped the ante.

Instead, she plunged in head first, reaching up with both hands to pull his head down firmly, resting her hands on his cheeks, her thumbs caressing his cheekbones, exactly as she had done on Friday night, only faster.

She watched Harry carefully and saw his eyes widen in surprise before her face got so close to his that she could no longer focus. Not giving him a chance to pull back she grabbed a tighter hold of him and pressed her lips firmly against his, determined to kiss him until he was as embarrassed as she had been all morning.

His arms flailed wildly for a second, but then he brought them to her waist and she thought he was going to push her away. Before she could decide whether or not to let him, however, he pulled her closer instead and kissed her back.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to work out what this meant, but then deciding that it didn't matter as his tongue prodded her lips apart gently and he deepened the kiss.

Coherent thought seemed to leave her for a moment as his tongue familiarised itself with the inside of her mouth, but then she remembered: _She_ was supposed to be the one on charge, here. This was about making _him_ embarrassed.

She kissed him back eagerly, her tongue duelling with his for domination, and pressed her body against his until they were flushed together from knee to mouth, rubbing herself against him until he moaned into her mouth.

Smiling vindictively, she pulled back at last, the smile growing wider still when he followed her as she took a step backwards, his lips apparently glued to hers. She brought her hands to his chest and was pushing him away gently, which was made difficult by the firm grip he still had on her waist, when she heard noise from the doorway behind her.

"Harry! What on _earth_ do you think you're doing? Will you let her go _at once_!" Leo's appalled voice rang through the layout room.

Harry did as he was told, and Nikki had to bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud at the look on his face. It was the perfect blend of arousal and complete humiliation. "But--I--she--" he stuttered, but then seemed to give up. "Sorry," he said, looking blankly at Leo.

She could hear Leo muttering indistinctly to himself as he walked away.

Unable to hold it in any longer, Nikki giggled.

Harry glanced at the doorway to make sure Leo was really gone and then leaned in to whisper in Nikki's ear, his warm breath against her neck sending a shiver down her spine. "I am going to get you for this," he promised, a vicious smile on his lips as he pulled back and walked away.

Nikki turned to watch his retreating form. Somehow she thought payback wasn't going to be such a bitch.

_End_


End file.
